Lara Galian is a hauntingly beautiful sixteen-year-old from a poor village in Armenia. In a newly independent country, corrupt oligarchs have unprecedented power and considerable leeway to act above the law. When the ruthless Sergei Ayvazian approaches Lara's father with an offer to manage her through a wonderful and successful modeling career, her father refuses and is subsequently murdered. A month later, Lara's mother accepts the offer and Lara is whisked away to Sergei's mansion, only to be violently raped and sent to Moscow. Forced into prostitution, Lara refuses to accept her fate and...

Some of the largest exporters of crude oil are colluding to bring down the price of oil, at great cost to their national coffers. Governments are violating core ideologies and national values. It falls to James Blackburn, a successful energy consultant based in Washington, DC, who advises oil traders, oil producing governments as well as the CIA and the US Department of Defense, to uncover a brewing conflict in the Middle East that explains it all.

Blackburn finds himself influencing US policy at a time of great turmoil and change in the world. But he gets caught in a quandary as...